Ava Carol Ferrise

My passions stem from my childhood. I always preferred my imagination as company, to see what kinds of adventures I could take myself on. At the same time, I always had an eye for style. I loved shopping, admiring window displays and coming up with outfits for the week. While my love and desire to write creatively never died down, fashion quickly dominated as my top priority in high school. I found myself sketching outfits more so than developing plotlines.

I thought I had to choose one or the other for my professional life. I was under the impression that I could only stick to one interest. With that in mind, I got a retail job, and applied to Brookdale Community College to study fashion design. In two years, I completed my associate’s degree and made a life-altering revelation: I didn’t want to be a designer. I found myself naturally drawn to helping people build outfits instead of the garments themselves. When reading magazines, I was drawn to the narratives within editorial photoshoots and the ways in which photographs and text were laid out on the glossy pages. I learned that I could combine my passions for writing and fashion—not pick one over the other. 

With that, I chose to study Fabric Styling at the Fashion Institute of Technology. I found my voice as a journalist by editing and writing for Blush and W27. Through diverse projects in major courses, I taught myself how to tell symbolic stories and combine complex juxtapositions within graphic design and photographic styling.